Why is it that, after a war, the winners imitate the people they defeated?

A textbook case involves the purported mastermind and architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. (See prior post.) Arrested in 2003, KSM is a detainee in Guantanamo Bay prison. He soon will make his grand entrance in what is being billed at the "Trial of The Century."

You cannot read about KSM for two minutes without discovering he was subjected to "extended interrogation techniques" by CIA interrogators. Indeed, his name will be forever associated with waterboarding. Some reports claim KSM started talking after only one session. Others picture him as a die-hard recalcitrant, and it took 183 sessions to open him up. Welcome aboard a trainload of discrepancies, denials, distortions. In all the slag, a thimbleful of truth glistens: the CIA simply did not know how to handle terrorists. The CIA made that admission in a New York Times article.I asked, "What are we going to do with these guys when we get them?" recalled A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. from March 2001 until 2004. I said, "We’ve never run a prison. We don’t have the languages. We don’t have the interrogators."

The CIA's resounding inexperience, plus a political pressure-cooker atmosphere to "do something," doomed the agency to follow the path of least resistance. The Times article observes:

In its scramble, the agency made the momentous decision to use harsh methods the United States had long condemned. With little research or reflection, it borrowed its techniques from an American military training program modeled on the torture repertories of the Soviet Union and other cold-war adversaries, a lineage that would come to haunt the agency.

In other words, rather than create, develop, and employ techniques relevant to contemporary terrorists -- most of whom are middle class rebels -- the U.S. took lessons at the feet of foes it had defeated years ago. (Sidebar: as would be anticipated, the value of those lessons, which included waterboarding, was at best dubious to begin with; all the more so in dealing with middle class rebels. Sitting in his prison cell, KSM this very moment may be wiring up a classic demonstration of why that is the case.) I said least resistance because all the CIA did was reach for an off-the-shelf U.S. military training program, "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape" (SERE): The interrogation methods [used on KSM and other terrorists in custody], according to a recently declassified Pentagon report reviewed by The Spokesman-Review, are “reverse engineering” of techniques taught in the military’s SERE program, set up to train U.S. special forces and flight crews in the principles of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.

The SERE program is used by the Army at Fort Bragg, where Green Berets train, and at the U.S. Air Force Survival School near Spokane, where thousands of other trainees are instructed annually.

The theory behind the Cold War-era program is to expose soldiers to extremely harsh treatment during training — including sleep deprivation, pain and “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning — so they’ll be better equipped to resist if captured by forces that don’t adhere to laws on the humane treatment of prisoners ...The recently declassified Pentagon report, considered a military secret last year but made public in May by the Inspector General of the Defense Department, confirms that the SERE techniques were “reverse engineered” in 2002 for use against suspected al-Qaeda loyalists in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and other CIA “black,” or secret, detention centers.

The techniques include hooding and starving detainees, sleep deprivation, isolation in darkness, mocking their religious beliefs and subjecting them to other forms of extreme stress, including sexual humiliation, the report says — evoking the leaked photographic images of detainee abuse from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq taken from October to December 2003.

It cannot be said, however, the CIA resorted to force alone -- to pure Mutt.The agency assigned the role of Jeff to one of its agents, Deuce Martinez, a narcotics analyst with no experience with terrorists or their language or interrogation. Martinez worked to win KSM's confidence. He supplied KSM with sweet dates; in return KSM wrote poetry to Martinez's wife. Martinez, a Catholic, debated religion with KSM; he also talked, advised, and patiently listened hour after hour to family stories and complaints, e.g., KSM wanted a room with a view.

Was it Mutt or Jeff that got KSM to talk? Whatever the case -- face busting, trust building, or both -- The Times article claims that KSM and other prisoners became "quite compliant. In fact, according to several officials, they had become a sort of terrorist focus group, advising their captors on their fellow extremists' goals, ideology, and tradecraft ... Thus did the architect of 9/11 become, in effect, a counter terrorism adviser to the American government he professes to despise."

Unfortunately, the official ending is stuck with a singular dilemma: it is not the ending. The real ending will appear only when KSM's trial is over, not before.

In the meantime, as the trial proceeds, what is it that we will likely see, hear, read?

Under torture, he confessed to many things -- make that too many things -- he now disavows. KSM, a mechanical engineer, thereby unveiled his primary weapon: ambiguity. Look for him to use it time and again as leverage to gain mechanical advantage.

To that effect, I am inclined to agree not with scholars or terrorism experts, but with New York Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches who said KSM is "playing a game with the American government."

Let's consider the three logical possibilities:

(1) Some things KSM said under torture and without it are true. After all, if he lied all the time he would be simply written off -- case closed, over and out. That is why he must occasionally tell the truth; he needs at least some credibility in order to create ambiguity.

(2) Other things he said with and without torture were false. Here, too, leverage is the goal. If he always told the truth, there would be no ambiguity; with no ambiguity, he would have no leverage.

(3) Finally, some things he said were partly true and partly false, maybe in the end indecipherable.

No doubt numerous readers are thinking: wait a second. How does ambiguity create leverage? The answer is that in an ambiguous situation, he who is in the POSITION to know the truth has the power. KSM occupies that position.

We come to KSM's game plan:

(1) Captured in 2003, his short term objective was to gain time. As time passes, the value of any reliable information offered with or without torture falls. KSM as much admitted this goal in discussing his vague response to questions about bin Laden's location. He may be here, he may be there; what is certain is that precious time was gained in KSM's "confusion" -- time that allowed bin Laden and his accomplices to slip away. In the same vein, by confounding his own credibility, KSM gave other terrorists worldwide the time to move and change, to revisit and alter strategy and tactics.

(2) His middle term objective: KSM will work to ensnare in their own middle class mentality not only prosecutors, lawyers, jurists, judges, but also, and more importantly, a huge segment of the general public. KSM will spin an ever-widening web of ambiguities; he hopes we will be intrigued by the "mysteries" he presents. At bottom, it is our desire to find closure on numerous terrorist acts -- acts which presumably he knows about -- that is simultaneously the bait and the hook.

In short, we are supposed to think: knowledge is power. KSM knows things. Ergo ...He leaves it to you to fill in the blank.

(3) I think KSM's long term goal is to put into question America and its legal process. He will be playing to a worldwide stage. A vintage middle class rebel, KSM is driven to search for contradictions to cultivate. In his use of ambiguity as leverage, watch for the following manoeuvre; it will be latent or manifest, according to circumstances:

Suicide is defined legally as the deliberate taking of one's one life. It is illegal in America to aid and abet a suicide. KSM now says he wants the death penalty, that he wants to die a "martyr." The deliberate, voluntary nature of KSM's death wish creates what he no doubt sees as a delicious contradiction: by causing another party to aid and abet his suicide -- his deliberate death -- he transforms that party into the perpetrator of a criminal act. That perpetrator will be the U.S. Government. Thus, in executing KSM, that government becomes, by its own laws, a criminal.

Catch 23. Here it is not the individual who suffers on account of convoluted, governmental bureaucratic reasoning; rather, it is the individual who twists and ratchets up that reasoning in order to cause the government to undergo deprivation, isolation, humiliation, viz., extreme stress. A type of reverse homeopathic treatment occurs; doses of absurdity are administered to fight absurdity, not to cure but to kill. The middle class rebel welcomes absurdity; he lives in, around, and in spite of it. At present, we can only speculate. We won't know the truth until KSM walks into court. Until then, since nobody else is doing it, I'll play devil's advocate:

As Deputy Chief Richards intimated, KSM's "co-operation" -- that he was "broken" and became a "counter terrorism adviser to the U.S. Government" -- is wrong. Simply put: the happy ending handed us by U.S. officials is mistaken. When the curtain on the courtroom stage opens, a different man than the compliant one they portray is going to walk out, joke, wave to the cameras.

If that other KSM appears, the official happy ending we've been fed -- replete with dates and poetry -- is going to come off as a naive imitation of a clumsy Soviet propaganda film.

If that other KSM appears, a large question will loom behind him. It will shadow everything he says and does.

The question: When it comes to KSM and other middle class rebels turned terrorists, is it possible that the CIA and other security forces still just don't get it?

He is under arrest for being the creator and architect of 9/11. If you haven't heard of him, you will soon. His long-awaited trial is about to get underway.

Arrested in 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is being held in Guantanamo Bay prison. After years of political and legal wrangling, it was recently ruled that KSM and 4 alleged co-conspirators will be tried by a military panel, not in federal court.

The charges? According to the transcript of a pretrial hearing on March 10, 2007, KSM's attorney submitted the following written testimony:

I hereby admit and affirm, without duress ...1. I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation.2. I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z.3. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl ... For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet, holding his head.The testimony lists a total of 31 terrorist acts, among them the Bali nightclub bombing, the Shoe Bomber Operation, and assassination attempts against President Clinton and Pope John Paul the second. I kept waiting for Jimmy Hoffa and Princess Diana. Re-reading KSM'S confessions, it is no wonder one starts to wonder ...

KSM also submitted an oral testimony (I have edited it here as little as possible). It takes off with his explanation of why he refused to take the oath: "religiously I cannot accept anything you do."

In that vein, he attacks a Western misrepresentation of Islam: "Killing is prohibited ... The Ten Commandments are shared between all of us. We all are serving one god." Allah, KSM assures us, orders Muslims to "love those who are just." As for those who are unjust, "who fight you [because] of your faith and drive you out of your homes," well ... there's the rub.

KSM: We "have language for the war. You have to kill." It will always be that way. "War start from Adam when Cain he killed Abel until now. It's never gonna stop killing of people. This is the way of the language [of war]. American start the Revolutionary War then they starts the Mexican then Spanish War then World War I, World War II. You read the history. You know [there is] never stopping war. This is life." Here KSM is on the brink of saying that life is war; war, life. It follows that if there is no war, there is no life. He didn't say that -- or did he?

It also follows that language, which is part of life, is for him the continuation of war by other means. KSM puts language-as-tactics into practice by scolding the tribunal, "when you said I'm terrorist, I think it is deceiving peoples. Terrorists, enemy combatant. All these definitions as CIA, you can make whatever you want."

Make whatever you want. The age-old confusion of a freedom fighter and a terrorist bubbles to the surface. "If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain. For sure, he, they would consider him enemy combatant. But American they consider him as hero."

Good, bad: it all depends, KSM thinks, on which side you're on. At bottom, war is life because life is war; war is ... war ... As analyzed in The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion, tautological thinking -- the assumptions are the conclusions; the conclusions, the assumptions -- which KSM exhibits, is a principal characteristic of middle class rebellion.

In case you wonder about his position on the victims of 9/11, KSM utters an almost visible shrug. "Because war, for sure, there will be victims. When I said I'm not happy that three thousand been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids. Never Islam are, give me green light to kill peoples." Why, then, did he kill 3,000 people? You already know the answer. "But there are exception of rule when you are killing people in Iraq. You said we have to do it ... Same language you use, I use."

We have come full circle in KSM's circular reasoning. Al-Qaeda's philosophy as expressed by its purported Number 3 man boils down to this: what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Should/must, rule/exception: no doubt KSM believes he has reached the epitome of brilliance in confounding virtue and necessity. Sorry, al-Qaeda: others got there long before you.

The simple truth is that KSM converts a virtue -- defending one's religion and territory -- into a hyper-extended necessity, i.e., a command to kill non Muslims everywhere, even on an airplane going home. This is a classic manifestation of another principal characteristic of middle class rebellion analyzed in Source: preter-realistic reasoning, i.e., reasoning beyond, beside, more than a specific, concrete case warrants. KSM directly expresses and experiences preter-realism this way: religiously, I cannot accept anything you do.

In preter-realism we are looking at the essential dynamic of extremism.Life is not heaven, the middle class rebel concludes; therefore, it is hell. Never gonna stop killing. Having made a prediction, KSM must make it come true.

I oppose torture in interrogations. Time and again, poor results show that anybody will say anything just to stop the pain. Which poses this question: sadism aside, why inflict it? The real purpose of torture, I submit, isn't information or confessions, but rather to cement the solidarity of the group performing the torture. Thus, torture serves as an indicator that the group practicing it had severe unity problems to begin with, long before the first victim entered the room.

Not surprisingly, KSM now disavows his 2007 testimony, claiming it was obtained under torture. A captive of his own unconscious ambivalence, in typical middle class rebel fashion KSM can't come up with anything better than to push the "yes" and "no" buttons simultaneously. He thereby conjures up a dilemma: was he lying then or is he lying now? We've already seen this tactic, the open secret, in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, a.k.a. Bambi (see post of 3/27/2011). "Aye" as well as "nay" : that is how KSM votes "maybe." Ambiguity, however, -- not Guantanamo -- is the middle class rebel's hell. What the hell, he might as well make the most of it. It's called using the tools at one's disposal. And KSM does it; he uses ambiguity as a lever to gain mechanical advantage. The latter, by the way, is something he is well versed in; he has a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University (1986).Ambiguity as leverage is why KSM smiles, jokes, laughs in court. He employs a non-mechanical -- if not anti-mechanical -- phenomenon to serve a mechanical purpose. Here, too, as with virtue and necessity, war and life, KSM no doubt imagines he has successfully combined separate, often conflicting elements. In reality, he is merely exhibiting the cult of synthesis -- the nostalgic yearning for Unity, the One -- unconsciously driving middle class rebels everywhere.

Bambi (see this blog, post of 3/27/2011) got his revenge more quickly and completely than expected.

On April 8, Luis Posada Carriles, known as "Bambi," ex-CIA hand and 50-year, til-death-do-us-part enemy of Fidel Castro, was acquitted in El Paso of all 11 charges against him -- perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud. The jury deliberated only three hours before Posada, 83, walked out a free man.

The verdict was to the utter chagrin of a coalition of governments arrayed against Bambi. That coalition was as powerful as it was unlikely: the United States, Cuba, and Venezuela.

The legal charges against Posada did not include terrorism, a word that has yet to be clearly defined by any government. Underneath it all, I believe, that is the problem. The scopes on their rifles not pre-sighted -- "zeroed" -- the hunters got zero.

For those unfamiliar with the case, I'll let CBS provide an all-too-familiar intro:

Farooque Ahmed ... lived in middle-class suburban comfort with his wife and their infant son. They held steady jobs in northern Virginia's technology industry and mostly kept to themselves.

"They're a regular, everyday family," according to a friend. Regular, everyday -- a "quiet suburban dad." Except for one thing.

Ahmed, 34, pleaded guilty to two terrorism charges. In a government sting operation, he was caught plotting "to kill as many Americans as possible." On April 11, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Available facts indicate Ahmed is a vintage middle class man. His father was a bank executive. Ahmed holds a B.S. in computer science.

Make that marginally middle class. Ahmed had periods of unemployment during which he became involved in planning terrorist attacks on 4 DC metro transit stations. Someone who is marginally middle class --- being marginal to a margin -- is arguably the most middle class of all.

If economic trends keep undermining the middle class, we'll be seeing more Ahmeds.

As for "middle class" in its wider sense, i.e., any intermediate/marginal/transitional status or condition, Ahmed came to the U.S. from Pakistan in 1993. In 2002, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

You've seen him many times. The nice guy with the lawnmower. Regular, everyday. Maybe too regular, too everyday ...

Let's imagine the unimaginable. Too much middle class: could that be Ahmed's problem?

On the quiet suburban dad's sentencing day,

Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said: "The looming question is why?"

Ahmed, with a full salt-and-pepper beard and glasses and wearing a green prison jumpsuit, stood before the judge and tried to explain.

"I can not describe the words ... " he said, his voice trailing off. "All I can say is I'm sorry. It was the wrong action." (The Washington Post, April 12.)

Why? Judge Lee asked. I hope the judge, jury, and Ahmed's friends and family did not expect a coherent answer.

I can not describe. Voice trailing off ... The fact is, if Ahmed could tell you why he did it, he wouldn't have done it. I spent over 30 years researching the looming question. I insisted that the answer be more than true -- that it have practical applications: identifying terrorists, both actual and potential; interrogations; turning terrorists; infiltrating terrorist organizations; and above all, countering terrorist radicalization at home, school, workplaces, churches and mosques.

The result was a partial and provisional answer, The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion, published in 2009. I won't attempt to summarize its 496 pages. I will offer observations about two crucial issues which Ahmed's case raises.

Troccoli said three things contributed to Ahmed's decision to align himself with purported terrorists: exposure to radical Islamic rhetoric from al-Awlaki and others; anti-Muslim discrimination that he and his family faced in the United States that contributed to his alienation; and trust in an associate who turned out to be an undercover operative for the government.

The operative "led Mr. Ahmed to believe he was not alone" in supporting a terrorist plot, Troccoli said.

Ahmed's initial interest, Troccoli said, was to develop a website that would allow people to communicate about the plight of the Pakistani people and Muslims in general. But as the sting operation proceeded, Ahmed eventually agreed to take more serious action "that went beyond what he initially wanted to do," Troccoli said.

Ahmed became immersed in a fantasy world with secret codes and never shared his plans with his family, according to Troccoli. Had he done so, Troccoli suggested his family would have brought him to his senses.

"Now that he has essentially woken up from this fantasy world he was in ... it's like he shook his head and said, 'What am I doing?'" Troccoli said.

One can dismiss Troccoli's triptych explanation as unabashed, unabridged puff from an overworked and understaffed public defender defending the indefensible. His is certainly the standard response -- uncreative, simplistic-- seen and heard everywhere.

Nevertheless, let's briefly look at Troccoli's answer precisely because it is so ordinary, and rekindle Judge Lee's question to take that answer one step further.

Why was Ahmed susceptible in the first place to radical rhetoric from Anwar al-Awlaki and others? Lots of people are exposed to radical rhetoric; very few become terrorists.Salt-and-pepper beard: why Ahmed?

As for alienation, millions of immigrants are alienated and discriminated against, yet the majority do not plot to kill as many Americans as possible. That is the second reason why, looking at Ahmed in his green jumpsuit, the judge's question doesn't go away. We arrive at the third and final part of Troccoli's answer: Ahmed was led astray by government agents. Here the same logic applies. In order to entrap someone, there must be something to entrap. What was it?

Reading those words, I think even Troccoli would agree that the looming question still looms ...To start to answer it, let me backtrack a bit -- 2,000 years.

We have been told since Aristotle that the socioeconomic middle class is the center of reason and balance, of moderation and reconciliation of other classes. By and large, history has justified that belief. No wonder integration into the middle class is so revered as the definitive cure for alienated immigrants and other minorities.

If the belief is true, however, it is not the whole truth. The middle class is also the center of extremism and terrorism. Today, it is taboo to mention those two facets. Only a taboo can account for the enormous, emotional shock so widely felt every time a middle class man like Ahmed turns terrorist. Only a taboo can explain the energy -- the loom -- in Judge Lee's question.

Extremism and terrorism are born of middle class rebellion. Rebellion comes to the surface when the prevailing mode of social moderation and mediation maintained by the middle class becomes inadequate.

Rebellion is the middle class's principal repair tool. As we saw in the 1960s and 1970s in America, France, and elsewhere, once necessary changes are made and balance is restored, middle class rebellion disappears -- or rather, switches from manifest to latent. Rebellion never vanishes entirely. And that can create problems ...

Middle class rebellion's role is analogous to the role played by antibodies the body produces to fight diseases. The antibodies are as necessary as they are desirable. However, after the invading disease has been defeated, sometimes those antibodies turn and attack healthy tissue. The result is an autoimmune disease. The body, in defending itself, ends up attacking itself.

The solution is not to destroy the antibodies, but to guide them away from unwanted destruction. With that idea in mind, one more backtrack is necessary:

The middle class is totally dependent on other classes. A condition of dependency always creates ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, on the other. There's the good side and the bad side. It is precisely his own ambivalent feelings -- for the most part unconscious and stirred up by outside events -- that the middle class rebel finds intolerable and seeks to destroy.

Farooque Ahmed; Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad (another "normal dude. You wouldn't have looked at him twice."); the Portland terrorist Mohamad Osman Mohamud (a "good kid"): the solution to terrorism ultimately lies in middle class rebels becoming conscious of their own ambivalence. That is the only way they -- and we -- can control it, rather than being controlled by it.

That solution is seldom, if ever, pursued.

Instead, the rebel tries to jump off the emotional roller coaster by grabbing what he regards to be an absolute truth. An absolute truth is the opposite of ambivalence. Christianity, Islam, Marxism-Leninism, cults and personalities of all shapes and descriptions: the absolutes vary over time and place. What does not vary, however, is the middle class rebel's ability to make an absolute out of anything: a straight line will do. That is why attacking any particular entity, e.g., Islam, which a rebel has converted into an absolute truth and attached himself to, never in practice solves the problem.

When Troccoli noted that Ahmed seemed to be under a spell -- living in a fantasy world with secret codes -- he referred to that attachment. Now that he has essentially woken up from this fantasy world he was in ... it's like he shook his head and said, 'What am I doing?' Which is another way of saying, something in Ahmed's unconscious had risen up, seized control.

If Troccoli is telling the truth -- that Ahmed woke up with dismay -- then Ahmed took a giant step. We may yet get a coherent answer from him. The reason is the instant a middle class rebel begins to genuinely question his own basic assumptions, he ceases to be a middle class rebel.

Middle class rebellion is first and foremost an ideology. Ideologies do many things, but no ideology can seriously question its own premises. The moment such questioning begins, an ideology loses its unconscious roots. The ideology that becomes conscious dies.

The ideology of middle class rebellion is so deeply, unconsciously ingrained that escape from it is normally experienced as release from a spell. That is why self-generated questioning about basic premises, both logical and emotional, is a key development for interrogators and others to watch for and work with. Indeed, the lack of profound questioning and of the doubt and anguish accompanying it, is the telltale heart of the incorrigible terrorist who "sincerely apologizes" merely to cut a deal for less hard time in prison.

Kenneth Troccoli touched on the second essential point Ahmed's case raised. Had Ahmed's family known about his fantasy world, they could have brought him to his senses. Time and again, where family support is not forthcoming, other groups fill the gap in the middle class rebel's life. Al-Qaeda intuits that fact and acts on it. So, too, did the U.S. government: Ahmed believed he was not alone. The challenge to law enforcement authorities is taking their knowledge beyond the limited scope of generating terrorist cases to prosecute.We arrive at the doorstep to the answer the looming question merits and demands: a real life, observable, behavioral, tactile answer -- not an answer in words in a speech, book, or on the Internet. This post included.

Such is the summary judgment the Post passes on its competitor. The article blasts NBC news for its failure to mention that GE, NBC's parent company, "paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes" despite earning $14.2 billion in profits. Yep, there's nothing worse than missing stories.

Speaking of which ...

On March 16, the Post published an article on the popularity in the GOP base of various Republican political figures. I wrote to the Post, pointing out that the opinion poll's methodology was outdated and "fatally flawed."

In the spirit of the "accountability journalism" The Washington Post so deeply cares about, it refused to print my piece.

Was the Post right? Here's what I wrote. You be the judge.

Editor:

At the moment, the only thing with bigger ground problems than Sarah Palin is The Washington Post's March 16 article, "Palin loses ground among GOP base." The article is groundless because its opinion poll used outdated polling techniques; baseless -- literally -- because the poll failed to identify adequately the GOP base, the focus group of the article.

The poll was conducted nationwide of people who have conventional and cellular phones. Of course, not every voter has a telephone -- notably Indians on reservations. Also, bored teenagers with a sense of humor will readily claim over the phone to be true blue voters. But I digress.The Post article presented survey findings gleaned from 414 Republicans and "GOP-leaning Independents." What that means: from the proverbial getgo, the sample was contaminated. The last time I looked, Independents are not Republicans, hence they cannot be part of the "GOP base." If you wish to include nonGOP registered voters in some sort of functional definition of "GOP base," then you must include GOP-leaning Democrats. Such people exist; in fact, they were decisive in more than one election.

You Doubting Thomases out there asking why the Post poll included one group but not the other: I hope you find solace in Aristotle's words that are as timeless as they are inconvenient: "Wonder is the beginning of philosophy." I submit that the poll did not include GOP-leaning Democrats because the Post is not interested in some functional, abstract or emotive "GOP base." The fact that the poll made GOP political figures (Huckabee, Romney, Palin, Gingrich) the topics of its questionnaire indicates what the Post really wants to know: who is likely to win the next GOP presidential primary?The question is crucial; billions of dollars are riding on the outcome. Unfortunately, because the poll's methodology is fatally flawed, its road to the answer is paved with double and triple-bottomed boxes:For starters, how did the poll identify "Republicans"? Answer: It let people on the telephone identify themselves. Don't look now, but the poll just fell into a double-bottomed box. Not only are some people mistaken or lie about their voter registration, others are not even registered to vote. NO PROBLEM: the Post poll blissfully went its merry way and interviewed them even though they were not members of the right population, i.e., the GOP base.

Sorry, I made a mistake -- the box is triple-bottomed. Many people interviewed over the phone in fact are registered Republicans but they will not vote in the upcoming GOP presidential primary. You don't need to read "Hamlet" to know there's the rub ...To give you folks at home an idea of what's at stake, let's assume the turnout of GOP-registered voters in their upcoming presidential primary will be 50%. If the Post sample were randomly drawn from the right group, i.e., GOP registered voters -- which it was not -- then we could reasonably expect that 207 of the 414 Republicans interviewed would be nonvoters. Stated crudely, fully half of the interviews would be worthless for predicting the GOP primary.

Or would they? What difference does it make? Well, a trainload. GOP primary voters are, among other things, older than GOP registered voters in general. Older people go to bed earlier, have more physical problems answering a telephone questionnaire, etc. Result: they tend to be underrepresented in a random telephone poll. Such realities are why polls of primaries are notoriously less accurate than polls of general elections. Polls of city elections are even more problematic: city election voters tend to be much older and have far longer residency than either the general population or the registered voter population.In drawing a sample of the GOP base, how can you be sure that someone is (1) registered to vote, (2) registered with the GOP, and (3) here comes the hard part -- will likely vote in the upcoming GOP presidential primary? How, in short, can the Post be sure next time it polls the right population?

Here we arrive at a sampling technique that most polling firms don't know and don't want to learn. Their reluctance is understandable: the technique will double their workload, triple their accuracy -- but halve their profits.

As with most magic tricks, the solution to the enigma of identifying real voters is hidden in plain sight ...

When you vote, what happens? In most places, after you give your name, precinct officials hurriedly search through a document -- a voter roster. The roster is a computerized list of all the registered voters in your precinct. Next, you sign the roster in the blank space beside your name, then step inside the voting booth. Unknown to the general public (and to most political consultants) voter rosters are usually public information retained by Secretaries of State for a legally specified number of years. If you go into the state archives, dig out the rosters, and draw a sample entirely from people who definitely voted in a past GOP primary -- you know they voted by their signatures -- guess what happens. The cause of the astounding accuracy of your poll is simple: the right population has finally, truly, really been sampled. (Sidebar: the Post poll claims a level of accuracy of plus-or-minus five percentage points. Such figures always accompany polls; they exude an odor of science. In truth, those numbers are blue smoke and mirrors because they assume the right population was sampled in the first place.)

To be sure, new people move into a state and minors turn voting age; such people obviously are not on the voter rosters in the state archives. For those experienced in working with rosters, however, such groups do not pose any significant problem; simply put, there are ways of weighting them.

When using actual, real, live voters -- not telephone chatter -- as the source of a poll sample, something intuitively obvious but surprising takes place: the number of undecided/no opinion drops drastically. That outcome has already been explained: polls done the outmoded way of randomly surveying people on the telephone invariably end up interviewing people who are not voters, hence do not care, hence have "no opinion." In that regard, the Post poll findings that 23% of the people interviewed had "no opinion" of Mike Huckabee, 19% had no opinion of Mitt Romney, etc., are as typical as they are predictable.

Blindly polling telephone talkers definitely skews polls. (A case in point: on Indian reservations, telephones belong disproportionately to better-off, more conservative voters). Given such undeniable biases, many readers will condemn the Post poll as corrupt. Others will conclude it was incompetent.

Who is right?

One answer: corruption or incompetence, it makes no difference. In news about our federal government and officials, The Washington Post leads the nation. Its readers and editors deserve better.

Well, there you have it, Dear Reader. If you ever wondered about what is not being printed -- what sort of thing the powers-that-be are forbidding you from seeing -- you now have a concrete case.

Was my missing article too long? Too complex for the "average reader" to understand? One thing I learned after decades of writing: when it comes to why an article or book was not published -- that is to say, why it was censored -- THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A REASON.

Which is why I don't waste time with reasons.

If The Washington Post truly wants to be the moral guardian of journalism in America -- if not worldwide -- it's easy. All the Post has to do is investigate itself.

As I write these words, the federal government is preparing to shut down on Saturday.

Unless our executive and legislative branches come to an agreement, 800,000 government workers will be furloughed. Museums and parks will close, Washington D.C. will be without basic services. Guess what will start to pile up on the sidewalks.

There is a way to avoid a national budget crisis in the future.

A proposed constitutional amendment: if no new budget is passed, the old one would automatically stay in place another year. For obvious reasons, maintaining things as they are is anathema to elected officials. The amendment would supply the missing incentive they need to pass a new budget.

Don't tell me the idea is not workable. Maintaining existing appropriation levels happens frequently; in fact, it is being done right now under a Continuing Resolution passed by the House and Senate. However, the time line is limited for such resolutions -- in this case, April 8. For a copy of the resolution currently in effect, go here:

In an essay published a few days ago in al-Qaeda's on-line magazine "Inspire," Anwar gave al-Qaeda's policy position on the recent Middle East turmoil.

My blog has posts on Anwar al-Awlaki (11/23/2010, 11/12/2010, 10/31/10, 10/15/2010), known as the "bin Laden of the Internet." A cleric hiding in Yemen, he is on America's targeted killing list, i.e., hit list. Born in New Mexico, Anwar holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State (1994); he studied for a Ph. D. in human resource development at George Washington University. Daddy was a Fulbright Scholar, Agriculture Minister of Yemen, and university president.

Conclusion: in, around, and in spite of himself, Anwar al-Awlaki is a middle class rebel.

For readers of The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion, Anwar's latest refrain is familiar, all too familiar ...

The lyrics:

We do not know yet what the outcome would be, and we do not have to.The outcome doesn't have to be an Islamic government for us to consider what is occurring to be a step in the right direction. Regardless of the outcome, whether it is an Islamic government or the Iikes of al-Baradi, Amr Mousa or another miIitary figure; whatever the outcome is, our mujahidin brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation ... Even without this wave of change in the Muslim world, the jihad movement was on the rise. With the new developments in the area, one can only expect that the great doors of opportunity would open up for the mujahidin all over the world.

We do not have to. What the ... ? Why so flat? Why such a wooden tongue?

Answer: Anwar cannot do otherwise. He is condemned to sing the same song over and over again, until he recognizes and accepts a secret he keeps, even from himself. Unfortunately, no middle class rebel has ever said what he is. Anwar al-Awlaki -- an unexceptional man with an unexceptional story -- will not be the exception.

As analyzed in The Source of Terrorism, one of the key tenets of middle class ideology is that ideas

are not social in origin. Rather, they are are considered to be ultimately individual, sacred and probably eternal, and definitely independent of socio-economic class. However, once a social origin is denied, all that remain are quasi-mystical explanations ... " (p. 300).

It is not difficult to see how a middle class man is attracted to anything claimed to be the word of god; he is already halfway there. Nor is it difficult to see how he would be inclined to view not just ideas but symbols in general as other-worldly:

Because a symbol always transcends its carrier, mystification of symbols is an inescapable temptation. This temptation is especially strong in the middle class precisely because it denies the social origin of words and other symbols, and therefore needs to fill in the very void its own ideology constantly creates. (Ibid.)

The sheer volume of Anwar's lectures and articles provides a case study in what happens when words are assigned an extra-terrestrial origin:

Given the belief that words are magical keys to a magical kingdom, the political consequence of mystification of symbols is an inordinate emphasis on speeches, declarations, slogans, manifestos, proclamations, programs, platforms, pronunciamentos. (Ibid., p. 303.)

Absolutely convinced he is attuned to absolute truths, the middle class rebel engages in idiosyncratic political behavior. To trace its basic contours, we turn to someone eminently experienced in the subject: Karl Marx, a lawyer's son and middle class rebel par excellence. With tongue in cheek -- but not entirely -- Marx wrote 150 years ago that anyone wishing to lead in a militant, middle class rebel milieu needs to have a nucleus of idees fixes, he must be a man of principle in permanent pursuit of his mission to redeem the world. By means of sermons at the front and sustained didactic propaganda, he must impart a consciousness of this higher idea to every man individually and in this way he will transform the whole troop into sons within the faith. If this higher ideal is tinged with philosophy or mysticism or anything that surpasses normal understanding, if it is something Hegelian by nature ... then so much the better. (Ibid., p. 303.)

A la Hegel, Anwar insists that it makes no difference what regimes sprout in the Middle East -- that whatever the outcome is, it will be a step in the right direction. "Heads we win; tails you lose": clever, no?

Even in peacetime he does not lose his indispensable assurance and just as in wartime every setback spurred him on to proclaim victory on the morrow, so now he is forever expounding on the moral certainty and the philosophical inevitability with which 'it' will start to happen within the next fortnight. (Ibid., p. 305.)

Decades ago, a TV game show "Name That Tune" presented a visceral challenge to contestants. They had to identify a well-known song after hearing only a few notes.

Do not have to; regardless; one can only expect; on the rise: even after so many notes, Anwar cannot name the tune he is playing. Neither can his politically tone deaf, middle class rebel disciples -- Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, among others.